Getting Radioactive With Melt Cosmetics

You may have noticed that lately I’ve been on nothing less than a holy mission to find and try every damn liquid lipstick formula out there today. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t get caught up by other products if the colors are right and the formulas are bangin’. Enter Melt Cosmetics.

A friend turned me on to the Radioactive Stack, and I was immediately gagging on the eleganza! This stack of 4 neon shadows includes Radon (Orange), Neon (Yellow), Xenon (Green), and Radioactive (Pinks) and it is perfectly pigmented to help you create your favorite Jem-inspired 80s throwback looks or totally on trend neon fantasies. Here is a short video I put together on my cell phone showing off the four colors (as well as the lipstick I ordered in the shade Lewd):

Gorgeous! But the trick with neon shadows is that they can be patchy. So how does Melt perform? Let’s dive right in and see!

The first thing I noticed with the shadows is that they do tend to be a little powdery when I was running my finger over the pan – there was a lot of fallout and a fair amount of powder sitting on the top of the pan when I was done. This can lead to a good deal of waste, but I guess if you clamp the pans back together it’s still there and able to be used? For the most part, the powdery-ness went away when I applied them and they blended gorgeously – only the yellow shade was a little patchy and uneven, and I think if I had spent more time on it I could have gotten it to a good place. It wasn’t bad, mind you, but definitely not as even as the other shades. Here’s some swatches:

Radioactive is a true neon pink with maybe a hint of pink pearlescent quality to it (or maybe a metallic?). It’s definitely all one shade without any surprising shifts. It’s a good dupe for Star Power from the Jeffree Star Beauty Killer palette, though I think it may be a little bit lighter than that shade.

Xenon is like a neon swamp, in all the best ways! The yellowy green has a gold shift to it that is absolutely gorgeous! I didn’t love it next to Radioactive, but I think it would mix well with either of the other two colors in the stack.

As I mentioned above, Neon applied slightly patchy but not enough to really make me worry. Even in the short time I worked with the swatch, it went from really powdery to blended and bold. There is a gold glitter that is really subtle, but like Radioactive, it’s all one color and doesn’t feature any real shift.

Radon is surprisingly fabulous – I’m not usually a huge fan of Orange eyeshadows, but this shade tends towards coral and has a blueish shift that makes it like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I might even like this shade better than Radioactive! Totally killer!

As a little bonus, I also bought a lipstick – Lewd is a metallic/hologram sort of situation that is purple with lots of red undertones and a blue shift that makes it really dynamic and interesting. Here is a swatch below the shadow shades:

The color is sort of bruisey and lovely, and that blue shift really does take it to another level. It applied super creamy and soft, so I will definitely be checking out more of their lipsticks – this is an amazing formula!